country that so much has been done by private means within the last quarter of a century for the cause of church extension. It will be seen that, while thankfully acknowledging this, we avow our conviction that private resources can never grapple successfully with the difficulties of the question; that if we are to have a national Church at all, we ought to have an efficient one; and that it is only as a State question that it will ever be successfully met and adequately dealt with. Moreover, the idea which we entertain concerning a special order of ministers whose mission should be specially directed to those classes confessedly beyond the reach and influence of the present ministry, is one to which we invite the attention of those who are aware, as Christian men should be aware, and who feel as Christian men should feel for the wide-spreading desolation on every side, arising from the fact that we have, on every side of us, a heathen population-a people without a church. We say, in God's name, let a church be given to these people; let pious young men be ordained, and sent amongst them; let them be kept by this arrangement in connection with the national Church, whereas they will otherwise either go on as heathens from generation to generation, or they will pass over to some other form of Christianity. Can it be that there is truth in the sarcasm of a great Review which says, that High Churchmen are rather blessed than otherwise as their people pass over to Dissent? That they like the saving of trouble which small congregations secure them? This is certainly not true, generally speaking, of our evangelical brethren; and to them we would appeal, either to adopt our suggestions and give them all the weight of their opinion and advocacy, or else show some better plan, which may be also a possible and practicable one, by which the desired object may be achieved.

ART. V. Later Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions: a Journal of Travels in the year 1852. By EDWARD ROBINSON, ELI SMITH, and others. Drawn up from the original Diaries, with Historical Illustrations, by EDWARD ROBINSON, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Biblical Literature in the Union Theological Seminary, New York: with Maps and Plans. London: John Murray, Albemarlestreet, 1856, pp. 664.

IN continuation of the Article in our preceding Number, we come to the various inhabitants of the Holy City, and the monuments which respectively belong to them. These are three classes-the Jews, the Moslems, and the Christians; who differ from one another as to race, religion, and civil and political history. We begin with the Jews, as the original possessors of the country, to whom, indeed, it belonged, and still belongs, by the express stipulation and covenant of God.

A. THE JEWS OF JERUSALEM AND THEIR MONUMENTS.

I. Their Number and Character.-The inhabitants of Jerusalem may be estimated at nearly fifteen thousand souls, and of these the Jews may amount to nearly four thousand, the Christians to four thousand five hundred, and the Moslems to more than five thousand. The exact numbers are not known, and all that can be done is to give the most probable opinion. These Jews are, as to character, the most zealous and bigoted devotees of the nation, who have come to Jerusalem for purposes of devotion and superstition. The four Holy Cities are Jerusalem, Safet, Tiberias, and Hebron; and in them you may find the boiling fervour and irrepressible fanaticism of the Jewish race. 1st. This fanaticism is seen in many ways; in the motives which bring them to Jerusalem, which are to read the Law with more fervour and piety, to obtain redemption by so holy a pilgrimage, and to lay their bones in the land of their fathers, and thus obtain a better and easier resurrection; it is seen in their manner of reading the Law, which is wild and furious; and in their synagogue service, which is the most irreverent, most noisy and fanatical, we have ever seen. 2nd. They are generally poor and old. The wealthy Jews may occasionally visit the Holy Land, but they do not go there to reside. There is no trade to attract the mercantile spirit of the nation, and no hope of gain to excite their emulation and cupidity; the majority of the Jews in Jerusalem live on alms, and are, in fact, little better than

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beggars. The rich Jews throughout the world send their annual contributions to the Holy City, and these are divided by the Rabbis among their poor brethren. No young married people go to Jerusalem to bring up their families, and secure them a competent maintenance. But the old and infirm go thither to end their days in Judea; and thus, though many Jews are constantly flocking to Palestine, their number is not increasing. As to the national character in general, we would say it is made up of the following elements, which have been no doubt much modified and alloyed by ages of despotism and suffering. Firmness more than Roman has been their characteristic since the time that Abraham, according to the tradition, broke the idols, and told old Terah, his father, that the big ones had broken the little ones, until the present day. Proud as Lucifer, the son of the morning, they have always boasted of their names, their ancestry, their prophets, and the Law which was given to their fathers; affliction cannot bow them, torture cannot subdue them, death cannot kill them. They are the subtlest, the craftiest, the most far-seeing of men, for being persecuted for ages, they are always on the watch; and if trickery and cunning be also characteristic, we must attribute it also to this circumstance. They always make their way in the world. Where others fail, they succeed; where others turn back, they can get on; they surmount all difficulties to attain their ends; they live in the pains which others die from, and present the sublime, awful spectaclemajestic, though in ruins of a nation cursed, but defying the curse; doomed, yet incapable of death; scattered, stripped and peeled, yet sustained by the hidden purpose of Jehovah to show forth His praise in the latter-day glory. As a nation, they are a kind, hospitable race, remembering that they themselves were bondsmen in the land of Egypt; and the patriarchal principle is the foundation of their household economy. Many families often live in the same habitation, and the aged head of the house is treated with the greatest veneration and respect. They are a people of extremes; they are hospitable and avaricious, they are the richest and the poorest of men, they are firm as adamant, yet subtle and complying as to the means they use, simple and yet complex, proud yet cringing and suppliant, persecuted and ever persecuting when they have the power. Such is the character of that wonderful people.

II. Connect now these pale, worn forms that meet you in the Holy City with Old Testament history, and your interest in them increases at every step. These men and the whole

nation are descended from one man Abraham, the most honoured of human names, both in the East and the West: so that, as to origin, their unity is complete and absolute. They were bondsmen in Egypt; and the history of Joseph, the deliverance of Moses, the Passover, and the sprinkling of blood, the plagues upon Pharaoh and his people, the wanderings in the wilderness, with all the signs and wonders done there, until Joshua led them in triumph over the Jordan to the conquest and possession of the promised land, are interwoven with the very texture of their national, social, and individual life. These men are the successors of Joshua and his valiant bands, who, at the command of the Lord, extirpated idolatry and idolaters, and established the worship of the one living and true God as the national religion, to which, under pain of death, every soul must submit. God is their temporal king, and the whole administration, civil and sacred, proceeds from Him alone. Or connect them in your mind with the period of their national glory, when David composed his psalms, and Solomon reigned over the great and flourishing monarchy; when the arts and sciences flourished under a luxurious, philosophical king, and universal peace showered its blessings upon the land; and then let your heart melt over the sin and suffering which smote them, corrupted them, and scattered them to the ends of the earth.

"More blest each palm that shades those plains,

Than Israel's scattered race;

For taking root, it there remains

In solitary grace;

It cannot quit its place of birth,

It will not live in other earth.

"But we must wander witheringly
In other lands to die;

And where our fathers' ashes be,
Our own may never lie.

Our temple hath not left a stone,

And mockery sits on Salem's throne."

Or if you want to see them in another phase of their wonderful history, behold them corrupted in their religion, degraded in their morality, divided into two separate kingdoms; ten tribes, the great majority, carried captive, and lost among the nations, so that no man can identify them, and afterwards the two and a half tribes captivated and restored, and then finally dispersed among the nations, yet so that they cannot be hid. The ten cannot be discovered, and the two cannot be concealed, so that we see how the living Lord, the

ruler and guide of the nations and the universe, works out His hidden purposes, which are all grace and love, in the most different and opposite ways. Then, as to heroic valour and love of country, they stand, perhaps, unparalleled among the nations of the earth. Heroic was the defence of Scotland against England, of Switzerland against Austria, of Holland against the power of Spain, of France against combined Europe, and of England against Imperial France, yet these, the most thrilling episodes in modern history, must yield to the valour, perseverance, and indomitable resources of a handful of heroes under the Maccabees in defending their country against Antiochus and his conquering Greeks. But valour could not alter what God had decreed, and as the time of deliverance came, the sceptre departed from the seed of Abraham according to the prophecy (Gen. xlix. 10). And now we are to connect these miserable Jews of the Holy City with the most wonderful and glorious event recorded in the history of mankind, the incarnation of the Son of God, an event which astonishes and dazzles the human mind by the eternal mercy displayed in it, which magnifies and glorifies humanity by uniting it with the Godhead, and which gives the Jewish nation, and Jerusalem, and the land of Judea, and everything connected with it, everlasting interest for the whole Christian world. Yes; salvation is of the Jews, and we should remember, on seeing them wandering as strangers in their own city, and in the land of their fathers, and through the whole world, to treat them kindly for His name whom our souls love above all things, even Jesus, who brought life and immortality to light in the Gospel. This seed of the woman-the serpent-bruiser promised from the beginning (Gen. iii. 15) as the redeemer of mankind-was the seed of Abraham, the father of the faithful (Gen. xii. 1-7), of the tribe of Judah (Gen. xlix. 10), the Son of David (Is. xi. 1, 10; Acts xiii. 23), the miraculous sonof a Jewish Virgin (Is. vii. 14, ix. 6), in whom the great Immanuel-prophecy was fulfilled. He was born in a Jewish village, exercised his ministry among the Jews, and expiated the sin of His people in the city of Jerusalem, so that in every possible way the salvation and the saviour of the world were connected with that wonderful people, as it is written, "To whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever." (Rom. ix. 4, 5.) Let these thoughts kindle in our hearts the flame of pure love